As society becomes increasingly more computerized and as greater access is allowed to information stored on computers, it has become increasingly more important to find such information in as efficient a manner as possible.
For example, the development of computerized information resources, such as the Internet, and various on-line services, such as Compuserve, America Online, Prodigy, and other services, has led to a proliferation of electronically available information. In fact, this electronic information is increasingly displacing more conventional means of information transmission, such as newspapers, magazines, and even, television. The World Wide Web consists of a number of Web sites located on numerous servers, most of which are accessible through global computer networks. The primary issue in all of these resources is filtering the vast amount of information available in order that a user obtain that information of interest to him and receiving such information in an acceptable format. To assist in searching information available on the Internet, a number of search techniques have been devised to find information requested by the user.
These search techniques are based upon a node by node search. When the node does not contain "speech" (defined as viewable material for the reader), the search will navigate to the first child of the node and keep on navigating down each node string until speech is found. By being forced into examining each node separately, such searches are time and resource consuming.
In addition, none of these search techniques incorporate a transformative sequence for adjusting the information to the requirements of the user.
There is a need in the art to develop a query system that is easy to use and intuitive. There is an additional need to combine such a query engine with a transformative sequence to allow documents to be presented to users in the format they require.